Shaquan Duley Gets 35 Years

We don’t cover much criminal news, but the case of Shaquan Duley continues to draw national attention.

Duley is the Orangeburg, S.C. woman who suffocated her two children – 2-year-old Devean C. Duley and 18-month-old Ja’van T. Duley – and then staged a crash scene on a bridge over the Edisto River in August 2010.

Earlier this month, Duley pleaded guilty to two counts of murder – and this week she was sentenced to 35 year s in prison as a result of her crimes.

On Sunday, an interview of Duley conducted by television empress Oprah Winfrey will air on Winfrey’s OWN Network.

Duley’s case immediately invoked comparisons to the 1994 murders of 3-year-old Michael Smith and 14-month-old Alex Smith by their mother, Susan Smith. After initially telling police that she had been carjacked by a black man – and making tearless pleas for the safe return of her children – Smith later confessed to strapping the two children into the back of her Mazda Protege and letting it roll into John D. Long lake in Union County.

Smith is eligible for parole in 2024.

We’re firm supporters of the death penalty here at FITS … and it’s crimes like this which remind us why we support it.

Oh, and faces like these …

Was Duley emotionally disturbed at the time she killed these two children?

We don’t know … we weren’t there … but let’s suppose for a moment that she was, and that the defense narrative of a woman who was driven to insanity by her overbearing, hypercritical mother is accurate.

Be that as it may … does life not constantly present all of us with similar trials and tribulations? Situations that push us to the brink?

Of course it does …

We’re sorry Shaquan Duley had a rough life and that her mother was hard on her, but guess what … life is hard. Incredibly so at times. Her circumstances don’t justify her mistreating these kids, let alone savagely murdering them – which is why once her plea had been entered we would have immediately scheduled her for an appointment with a Kevorkian cocktail.